Read former special envoy Volker’s full prepared testimony on Trump-Ukraine controversy

Politics Oct 4, 2019 12:50 PM EDT

The former special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, on Thursday told House lawmakers about his work with Ukraine, stressing that “at no time was I aware of, or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden.”

According to a copy of the testimony Volker gave to a closed-door meeting of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and members of the Intelligence and Oversight Committees, released to PBS NewsHour by someone who had seen it, Volker said his role was “entirely focused on advancing U.S. foreign policy goals with respect to Ukraine.”

Volker’s meeting with the committee lasted nearly 10 hours. Read his statement here:

Read Volker’s full prepared testimony here.

We're not going anywhere.

Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on!

Left: Kurt Volker, U.S. President Donald Trump's former envoy to Ukraine, arrives to be interviewed by staff for three House of Representatives committees as part of the impeachment inquiry into the president's dealings with Ukraine, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. October 3, 2019. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Go Deeper

By —

Yasmeen Sami Alamiri Yasmeen Sami Alamiri

Yasmeen Sami Alamiri is the Senior Editor for video and special projects at the PBS NewsHour.

By —

Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin

Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries.
The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza; reported on the Syrian war from Syria's Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders; and covered the annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage.
From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage.
Schifrin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

@nickschifrin